All Around the Union

P: In Leningrad one Vladimir Chukhnovski appeared with his fiancee before the Marriage & Divorce Registry at exactly noon, was married at 12:05, quarreled with his wife over where they should live until 12:20, applied for and secured a divorce at 12:25--probably a record. P:. In the Pamir Mountains was charted and mapped what is believed to be the last previously unexplored region in the Soviet Union. Mappers, returned to Moscow, last week proudly displayed the measurements of a hitherto unsuspected glacier,

70 miles long, and claimed to be second largest in the world.

P: In Leningrad the State Distilleries resumed production, last week, of Starka, a renowned and peerless brand of vodka. That Russia spends the equivalent of half a billion dollars every year on this fiery beverage was revealed in a typically candid statement by Commissar of Health Nicholas Semashko. After a tour of inspection through 400 village schools Commissar Semashko reported "too many pupils disgracefully drunk." A "photographic temperance campaign" recently started by the Moscow Workers' Gazette is featuring every day pictures of the most debauched and bibulous souses who have signed the pledge. Each pledger publicly challenges a friend to compete with him in maintaining abstinence; and the Gazette proposes to flay and brand backsliders.

P: In and around Kharkov, Capital of the Ukraine, a sham battle was staged with 20,000 Civilian reservists mobilized to defend their city. Sirens screamed alarm at 6 p. m. and embattled citizens rushed forth with arms, gas masks, barbed wire apparatus, and other portable war paraphernalia. By 10 p. m. barricades were everywhere erected; but between 1 a. m. and dawn the enemy (ten and a half Red Army divisions) broke through, firing dummy poison gas shells which emitted clouds of smoke. Three airplane raids were staged. Not until 2 p. m. did the "Young Communist Reserves" expel the enemy. Significant fact: Kharkov and indeed the whole Ukraine is a most valuable and vulnerable part of Russia, lying directly open to hypothetical attack by the states of Eastern Europe.

P: In Leningrad the Soviet News Service Tass announced that a $600,000 contract for radio apparatus ad been let to the Radio Corporation of America. P: In Moscow plans were approved and the letting of contracts authorized for a subway to be completed within four years.